How John Coped
by fleetwood-mouse
Summary: It wasn't exactly how he'd thought that John would cope, but they were, after all, English. Maybe it had been unrealistic to expect an emotional reunion, a charged exchange, an embrace his arms weren't quite sure how to return, a fist to the jaw. Instead, he would slip seamlessly back into life at 221B, and life would go on like it had, except when John would go silent and blank.
1. Chapter 1

It went differently than Sherlock expected.

While he wasn't exactly disappointed about the lack of a tearful reunion full of emotions he couldn't quite process (though the punch he had been sure John would throw might have helped to alleviate the guilt), it did irk him that he had been unable to accurately predict the outcome of a situation which had weighed on his mind for so long. Had his mind been dulled by all that time spent chasing down Moriarty's web without the intellectual stimulation of a real case? Or was it something in John that had changed? Had Sherlock really been away so long as to come back to a John he could no longer read?

Of course John had just changed a little, he supposed. _More of the sitting down type,_ compared to before. His limp had returned, of course. As he had watched over John, (before he was able to show his face), Sherlock had entertained the notion that his return would heal that ailment as their first meeting had, but the damage did not appear to be rectifiable this time.

And John didn't push him to eat anymore. An embarrassingly long amount of time had managed to pass before Sherlock had picked up on this fact. Since his work precluded the need to eat, Sherlock could go for quite a while without a thought of food or his appetite; why then would he feel uneasy, why would he even notice that John was no longer nagging him to fulfill a need he didn't feel?

He did, though. And once he had noticed, there seemed to be no reasonable explanation for it. Before, John had wanted him to eat even after they'd just argued – so while he was prepared for John to go pissy and silent for a while, it was simply unlikely that anger alone could prompt the doctor to forget his concern for Sherlock's well being. In fact, given how deeply Sherlock's death seemed to have affected him, shouldn't John be more vigilant about Sherlock's health now? (Sherlock had the vague sense that this thought might be "a bit not good" but decided against asking John to confirm his theory this time.)

Not fully understanding these changes made Sherlock uneasy, but it was hardly the kind of topic that lent itself readily to discussion, or at least not the kind of discussion that Sherlock would like to have. So he chose to accept it, as he accepted the other changes that had taken place in John while he was gone. The changes in himself, however, Sherlock found somewhat more difficult to accept. For example, he had always frowned upon speaking euphemistically but, although it really was less accurate, he now found the phrase "while he was gone" much preferable to "while John believed him dead."

But there was no reason to focus on changes like that when a far more stimulating mystery lay in how John was different. Like how he no longer accompanied Sherlock out on cases. His leg would seem to be the most ready explanation for this, but it wasn't quite consistent with the way he reacted the times when Sherlock did ask him along. "Lestrade? Sure," John would huff, voice tinged with something close to sarcasm, as he folded himself into an armchair, favoring his leg. "A case, yeah." And he would sip his tea and unfold the newspaper as if he were trying to hide within it, looking for all the world like if he took his eyes off its printed pages, he would have no choice but to take in how far his raft had drifted from the shore.

Sherlock missed having John along. Maybe it was childish and selfish to want someone to chase after him and tell him how brilliant and clever he was, but Sherlock needed his blogger. The same praise would have meant nothing coming from someone else – since any idiot could plainly see that Sherlock was brilliant, the words simply had no meaning unless they came from someone whose judgment Sherlock respected, whose admiration Sherlock innately felt the need to seek.

He could still work without John, anyway. He had done until now, and even though he might have hoped he wouldn't have to work alone upon his return to Baker Street, Sherlock could not help but recognize that their lives had, in almost every other way, returned to normal, and he knew that such a thing was more than he could have asked for, far more than he deserved.

John still came home from the clinic in the evenings with a takeaway and puttered around and talked to him. John still made tea for Sherlock, too, and he still wore silly jumpers and watched crap telly, and all of those things together reminded Sherlock that he had made it back home. So what did it matter if John snapped sometimes? If he made toast for two and then threw the plate to the floor? If he got angry at Sherlock out for making too much noise but cut off his own rant with a pained, choked sound, banged his fist on the kitchen table, and let his head drop forward to sit silent for several minutes? It might not be the healthiest way for someone to handle a shock like this, but Sherlock knew that it was much better than he deserved.

Nor was it exactly how Sherlock had thought that John would cope, but they were, after all, English. Maybe it had been unrealistic to expect an emotional reunion, a charged exchange, an embrace his arms weren't quite sure how to return, a fist to the jaw. But instead, Sherlock would slip almost seamlessly back into life at 221B, and life would go on like it had, except John would shout sometimes and then go silent and blank and that would be how he coped, and Sherlock would step quietly around him and deserve so much worse.

So now it was John who went for days without talking, who made an inexplicable ruckus at odd hours (Sherlock was careful about the violin, now – of course John had kept it, and Sherlock had rescued it from where he found it locked in the cupboard and cleaned it, but he no longer played while John was in the flat. John had once loved the music but now it made him go quiet and still, and hold his head in his hands. Sherlock had tried playing at night once, hoping that he could help stir up happier memories if John heard it in his dreams, but John's face the next morning – drained, pale, and sick with exhaustion – had robbed him of this delusion quickly, and the flat was quiet, now), but Sherlock knew that he deserved some rottenness. He had done even before he'd disappeared (_died and come back_). It was a bloody miracle that the universe had seen it fit to give him a flatmate as kind and as good as John in the first place. If John was still here with him after everything, that was more than Sherlock could ask for.

Sherlock didn't keep body parts in the fridge anymore. To be fair, he hadn't yet taken many cases which required him to do so, and for those that did, well, it didn't hurt to work at St. Bart's from time to time. Their lab wasn't as good as his kitchen, of course, as it wasn't organized in his sensible way and he had to follow their bloody rules and procedures or risk being kicked out and having to store eyeballs next to the jam again, but the universe had given him John back and Sherlock understood now, better even than while he was gone, what a wonderful and fragile gift that was. And he would be good.

That isn't to say that he had stopped his experiments entirely; forensic science, the pursuit of knowledge, his own cleverness – these were not things he could neglect simply because he was ineffably, paralyzingly grateful. He was just taking a break from the things that would make Mrs. Hudson shriek, in favor of tamer, less gruesome exercises.

And what's more, John didn't get angry about the experiments like he had before. Whether this was some new found perspective (after all, microscopes and bubbling chemicals did not provide complaint fodder compared to human lungs in the crisper drawer) or simply another change in John, Sherlock couldn't be sure. But even if John didn't yell at Sherlock to put that away or do that somewhere more appropriate than the sodding kitchen table, dammit, the experiments did seem to bother him in a way they hadn't before. Sometimes, seeing Sherlock fiddling with beakers and flames (and occasionally thumbs, yes) would make John sit down heavily and rub his temples for a long time, mouth tight and face pale.

Sherlock had continued to appropriate John's laptop to record his data, and for a while, he had thought that it was just as it had always been and John didn't really mind (or at least not enough to put up more than a token protest), but Sherlock had been disabused of this notion one day around tax season, when John came home from the clinic and opened up an Excel spreadsheet, and Sherlock had seen the color drain from his face straightaway.

"No," John had said, banging the laptop shut. "No. I didn't, I can't, I'm..." He drew his feet up into the armchair and breathed deeply, eyes squeezed shut. He seemed to be counting to ten. Sherlock observed that he made almost all the way to six before getting up and disappearing into his room. John had reemerged a few moments later, only to vacate the flat without saying a word. It had seemed obvious to Sherlock that he was going to the pub, probably for a long night out, but then John had disappeared to Harry's for two days, which was outside the realm of the ordinary, to say the least.

Sherlock had begun playing the violin – Tchaikovsky, which he almost never played for himself, in the hopes of drawing John back home through some sort of sympathetic magic – when he heard John's uneven footsteps on the stairs. The idea of stopping crossed his mind briefly, but drawing John's attention to the fact that Sherlock could see how the violin upset him seemed to be crueler, somehow, and so he did not.

On that night, John had looked at Sherlock, nodded, and disappeared into his room again. When Sherlock saw him making breakfast the next morning, he appeared to have returned to normal – or the new normal, anyway. Which was more (Sherlock reminded himself) than he deserved. John had made toast for the both of them, but Sherlock hadn't noticed, and his portion had waited there on the plate until John had come home from the clinic and binned it.

A few days had passed since then, and things had been calm. And even if John may have been a little quiet, yes (of course, John was overall quieter now than he had been before, but this John was even quieter), nothing in particular was out of the ordinary. John was off from the clinic, taking advantage of a few days of leave he had earned filling in for a colleague whose daughter's appendix had ruptured, and instead of taking a proper holiday, he was spending the time resting up at 221B.

Sherlock was enjoying John's company. They were interacting only sporadically, as the samples under the microscope on the kitchen table required Sherlock's full attention, but he appreciated the reassuring warmth he felt hearing the rustle of pages from the other room, the occasional yawn, the sound of John clicking a pen against his teeth. He knew that John wouldn't call out to him for help with the crossword answers, but when he heard John's slippered feet padding into the kitchen to refresh his tea, Sherlock hoped that his assistance might be necessary with a particularly vexing clue.

John closed the cupboard, set a package of biscuits on the table, and regarded Sherlock at his microscope.

"I suppose that's just what you do, isn't it?" he said. "Even now."

"Yes," responded Sherlock, adjusting the viewfinder. _Obviously_. He still didn't understand the purpose of this kind of chatter. This was a particularly inane example. _Did he do what he did? Why yes, he did, thank you._In what universe did this even resemble productive conversation?

John studied Sherlock closely. "It wouldn't make sense for you to do anything else, would it?"

"Hardly," Sherlock replied, not looking up from his specimen.

"Right," said John. He looked away and sipped his tea. "Right."

A few moments passed in silence before Mycroft knocked on the door. Sherlock heard the peremptory quality of the knock, its echo of _this is only a courtesy to let you know I've arrived and will be letting myself in, because your flat, as all of Britain, is under the umbrella of my authority_, and only one person in Sherlock's life knocked like that. John, however, must not have recognized the knock as being so undeniably mycroftian, and he headed towards the door to greet their guest.

Mycroft let himself in before John reached the door, and John stood in the entryway, steeling himself for this interaction.

"Hello, Mycroft," he spoke, softly. "What is it today?"

"John," Mycroft nodded an acknowledgment and swiftly crossed the room to sit opposite Sherlock at the kitchen table. Sherlock pointedly ignored him. He had some observations that he would have liked to jot down on his memo pad, but they would just have to wait. He would not be lifting his face from the viewfinder until his brother was gone.

"Would you like some tea, then?" offered John. Mycroft politely declined, and sat back in his chair, perfectly content to begin a staring contest against Sherlock's curls.

Sherlock could feel John's eyes on him as well (somehow, Sherlock always seemed to be aware of whether John was looking at him), a purposeful and almost penetrating stare, as if John was trying to see through him to the chair. He felt John's eyes away dart away from him to his brother, who was reclining like a king in the chair directly across from Sherlock, to the chair beside Sherlock, and then back to Mycroft, at which point John ultimately elected to remain standing. Why he would make such a big production out of the simple process of choosing whether to sit, Sherlock didn't know, but he could see how such a display would demonstrate to Mycroft that his imposition was presumptuous and resented, and Sherlock had to appreciate that at least a little.

Mycroft, eyes still fixed on his brother, was the one to break the silence. "If I didn't know better, I'd be concerned." Still looking back and forth between the two brothers, John shifted slightly, as if he were beginning to sweat. "It's unusual for you to ignore my messages for so long."

"I'm sorry, what messages?" John asked, his voice overlapping with Sherlock's simultaneous retort, "Why should I respond to something so deathly _boring_?"

Mycroft Holmes, as befits a man with his minor position in the British government, was usually the model of polite diplomacy, but a brief conversation with his little brother could shortfuse his temper in a way hostage negotiations and international crises never could. He slammed his palms down on the kitchen table and thrust his head forward.

"This is a matter of national importance," he hissed, straining to keep his voice below a shout "and you know that very well. I cannot see how your _experiments_" Mycroft spit this word out as if it were too hot to hold in his mouth, "could possibly keep you –"

There was a loud thud, and Mycroft's words cut off suddenly. Sherlock lifted his gaze from the microscope to see John pressing himself back against the refrigerator as if retreating from an onslaught of enemies. The way his knees were bent indicated that his legs could not be trusted to hold his weight, and his eyes were wide and blinking as his mouth tried to form words.

"John," Sherlock said, and he was on his feet immediately, but John wasn't looking at him. Unsteadily, he raised his hand to point one finger at Mycroft, then let his arm fall back to his side.

"You..." John was out of breath but his face was drained of color. He closed his mouth, swallowed, and parted his lips to try again. Sherlock saw the soldier in John as he steeled himself, and spoke, projecting the same authority in his voice. "Who... are you talking to... Mycroft."

Mycroft didn't seem sure of what was the proper response. His eyes darted to Sherlock – he parted his lips and blinked – and then quickly back to John.

At that, something registered in John's eyes (_shock, grief, fear_) and he crumpled into himself as he slid to the floor. He gathered his knees close and let his head drop between them, struggling for breath. Almost immediately, Sherlock was by his side, arm outstretched to touch, to take a pulse, to find out what was wrong, but he found himself hesitating. He turned his eyes toward Mycroft (hating himself for looking to his older brother for answers) and watched the knowledge dawn on Mycroft's face. Mycroft had found the answer, Mycroft had solved the puzzle, Mycroft had decoded his John.

"John," Sherlock ventured, testing. John drew in a ragged breath and let it out, almost a sob. Sherlock laid the tips of his three middle fingers against John's shoulder, carefully against the arm muscle, not to brush where he knew the scar must be. John drew in another quivering breath and spoke, voice surprisingly even.

"Just to be clear..." John began shakily, and stopped himself there, as if continuing were more than he could bear.

Mycroft, the bastard, didn't need the rest of the sentence. "John, I am so sorry," he whispered. "If I had known..."

John raised a trembling arm to dismiss the apology by waving his hand. "No... it's... it'll be all right. I'll be..." Even as John's head remained firmly tucked between his knees in crash position, Sherlock saw a movement reminiscent of his habitual, polite nod and could perfectly picture the expression on John's face.

Mycroft stepped back and pushed the chair neatly under the table. "I'll leave you two, then," he offered lamely, and turned, heading for the door. As he pulled it open, he turned to look at his brother, and where Sherlock expected his face to read _Really, Sherlock_ or maybe _You ought to take better care of your toys_, he could see nothing but sorrow and pity.

The door swung closed behind Mycroft and in that instant, suddenly, Sherlock knew. He felt his eyes widen and his jaw drop open. His chest tightened but at the same time, something in his gut loosened and his stomach dropped to his feet and his body went cold.

John had thought he was living with a dead man. John had thought he was going mad. John had... Sherlock felt a heavy, buoyant fog roll in around his mind. Condensation short-circuited the motherboard. The knowledge weighed him down, pulled him towards the earth. He was aware that his mouth wanted to gasp open like a fish and he stared blankly at John, at the ball of doctor curled in front of the fridge.

John. John had thought... for how long, oh God. Sherlock wanted to curl in on himself and disappear for real. He wanted to wrap his arms around John's shoulders... and say what? He wanted to fall to his knees in front of John and cry – cry! – with his head against John's stomach. He wanted to prostrate himself at John's feet and sputter apologies and cough up his heart, the one he had been reliably informed he didn't have, and offer it up in atonement and show John the blood, the real blood, dripping from his hands.

Sherlock Holmes wanted to do all these things. He rose from his place at John's side, head swimming, and closed his eyes against the world. He raised his hands to his face and sucked in one deep, harsh breath, and then another before backhanding his microscope to the floor and fleeing out of the flat into the London streets.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the middle of the night when Sherlock found himself back in 221B, sodden coat and shoes deposited in an unceremonious heap in the doorway, unsteady and wavering on his long legs by the side of John's bed. His lips and the tip of his nose were still cold to the touch, and his hands had yet to fully recover from the cold outside, twitching sporadically as warmth tingled back to the tips of his fingers.

John made for a much more peaceful figure than he had expected, lying on his back, deeply asleep, too exhausted even for his subconscious to stir and summon up the nightmares he had suffered since his return from Afghanistan and – which, Sherlock now saw with a sudden burst of clarity – were not the nightmares he had been having since Sherlock's return. As they had slipped back into their old patterns, it had been all too easy to assume that this, too, remained unchanged and that the images that continued to haunt John when his defenses were down were from a time before Sherlock.

But gone were the whispered snatches of Pashto that had once punctuated John's nights; though the obstacle of John's bedroom door may have rendered his speech all but unintelligible, those few clusters of words that Sherlock sometimes caught were now unfailingly English. John's voice was still full of the same fear and despair as when he had dreamt of Afghanistan, but even though those dreams had sometimes made him cry out (for backup or for God or for mercy), until these past few weeks, Sherlock had never before heard John weep. Any fool could have seen that these dreams were different... but Sherlock had not noticed. He had allowed sentiment to cloud his judgment. His attachment to John had given him reason to blindly and gratefully accept the situation and kept him from examining the evidence too closely. The world's only consulting detective had altered the facts to fit his theory, and thus he had failed John Watson.

And now that he had stumbled upon the one theory to fit all the facts, his instinct was to reject it as too absurd, too cruel. But he saw now that John – who had always loved to listen to him outline the leaps of his logic – had never asked him for word one of explanation about his resurrection. Instead, with the intrepid stoicism of a soldier, he had accepted Sherlock's return as the final, inevitable manifestation of his grief, as the next logical step in the only theory he could construct from the evidence: Sherlock was dead and he had gone mad.

John had always been his interpreter, his mediator, the conduit by which he related to the world. And people liked him – they didn't simply find him preferable to the mad, spectre-like figure who was manic and morose by turns and made no concession to his own whims for the sake of social niceties. They didn't just deal with him as a liaison to their genius freak – they sought him out and sent him texts and invited him to the pub (with an implied plus-one, of course, but that was Sherlock and never John).

But John had needed to hide from these people the fact that the most significant figure in his life – arrogant though Sherlock may be, that was simply the truth – no longer content with John's memory alone, had returned to haunt their flat as well (never satisfied as long as there remained a fraction of John's attention that he was unable to dominate). The new lines in John's face were only one of the signs of how heavily this had weighed upon him, but what truly disturbed Sherlock was how far this endeavor had required John to retreat. He had evidently felt the need to isolate himself to the point that there was either no longer anyone in his life to clue him in (no phone calls from Lestrade asking how he was or why he wasn't at the latest crime scene) or at least no one close enough to notice that what John was trying to hide was no longer grief so much as despairing fear.

Sherlock had acted to save John's life on the roof of Saint Bart's. He had taken every precaution possible to ensure that his own death would be nothing more than a ruse, trusting his secret only to Molly Hooper until he could return, holding evidence to clear his name, and show John the truth. He had needed to have John monitored not only to see that he remained safe from the remaining threads of Moriarty's web (now swinging broken in the wind), but also for any signs of desperate or suicidal behavior. It had hardly seemed likely, but John's safety, John's survival was paramount, and so Sherlock had reluctantly engaged Mycroft.

Sherlock thought he had prepared for every eventuality in his disappearance and return alike. On the long, cramped and cold nights he was crouched in hiding, he had run through in his mind the many different scenes that might play out when he did return to Baker Street. He had prepared himself for each one, and devised the best manner in which to respond to John's reaction (calming himself in the dark and the damp by mentally navigating the familiar corridors of John's mind – as comfortable an exercise as running his tongue over his own teeth, tracing slowly over each contour with confidence of what will come next), savoring all the while the familiar outline of the 'John' he held in his mind. But this outcome was one he had never considered.

John's voice cut through the darkness, and Sherlock felt himself pinned stiff in place, held immobile like a specimen against a board by the sound.

"Sherlock," John said. "You startled me."

A perfectly civil reaction. Perfectly normal, perfectly John. Sherlock felt the wires in his body go slack and he sagged somewhat against the pins that held him. "That was not my intention." His mouth was dry, and the storm of information whirling through his head spun uselessly before his eyes.

"It's all right," John answered, breathing out softly, understanding the apology behind Sherlock's words. He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. John didn't seem angry (though he well had the right to be), and although his aura of sadness had not been shaken, it did not radiate off him in airy waves as it had for the past weeks. It was because of the late hour, Sherlock realized. Having just awoken into this placid realm that was influenced by but not tied to his waking life, John was off his guard and unusually calm.

But then John stifled a yawn, and there it was again, in the set of his jaw – the tension that had filled him. Sherlock could see it in the clench of his teeth, the way he held his shoulders, in his eyes as the thin, sparse moonlight leaking in from the window reflected silver in them.

"Do you think..." John rubbed his temple and squinted down at the duvet. He gave a resigned sigh and began again. "Sherlock," he said, raising his eyes. "Could you come here for a moment?"

Sherlock stepped forward to the edge of the bed, and, registering the slight nod of John's head, sat down upon it facing John, crossing his legs neatly beneath him.

John steeled himself, an effort which, in and of itself, clued Sherlock into the emotion John was biting back. "Give me your hand," he said, enunciating his words with careful precision. He didn't move. "Your hand, Sherlock," John repeated. "And I don't want to hear about this in the morning, so please keep your mouth shut."

Silently, Sherlock extended his arm toward John as if to shake hands, failing to perceive. When John took Sherlock's wrist gently in his hand and turned it palm up, knowledge dawned, burning like an indictment. Sherlock let out a ragged, painful breath as John's fingers found his pulse. The memory of the cold concrete and pale London sunlight rushed over him, and his head fell forward. He could feel John's steadfast gaze upon him, but was unable to sit up and meet his eyes.

John's capable, doctor's hands were steady on Sherlock's arm, but his breathing was not. The insistent pressure of his fingertips held Sherlock's pulse down and amplified it, sending it thrumming through his veins with a roar he could feel throughout his whole body, and Sherlock wondered what stories his heart rate was telling John, besides the simple fact that it truly was still beating.

Sherlock's mind raced. If he had been in John's position, his aim would have been to fix the narrative, to record over an unacceptable memory that he had deleted previously. But he knew that John's mind was bound pages and not a hard drive, and that John's life's experiences, good and bad, were printed there in indelible ink. Logically, he understood that John was most likely trying to reaffirm the truth that Mycroft's visit had revealed and reassure himself of the heat and quickness of Sherlock's blood in his veins, chasing away the possibility that this was just another fever dream at the end of long weeks of fraying reality. Still, Sherlock felt it was imperative to give John all the data he would have needed himself. He raised his head and locked eyes with John, determined to bear this guilt, remake this memory.

John let Sherlock's arm drop gently into back his lap and, coming forward onto his knees, leaned in to press two fingers to the pulse point at Sherlock's throat. His eyes in this instant showed how truly he did perceive; this was not a moment where Sherlock would bristle him away with his usual sarcasm or mockery, and John trusted in that fact. Sherlock's mind raced through the other pulse points scattered throughout his body (_brachial, femoral, popliteal, dorsalis pedis_) but then he began to observe signs of John's breathing pattern evening out, even as his own heart started to pound. It dawned on him that this moment had almost fulfilled its function, that John had received the bare minimum of comfort necessary to stave over this deep hurt for the time being, and that he wouldn't, couldn't allow himself to need any more (knowing that what he had already received was far beyond what anyone could reasonably expect Sherlock Holmes to give), and that this intermission would shortly draw to a close.

When Sherlock felt John's shoulder tensing to pull away, he reached out to grab John's hand in his own, and clasped it to his chest, over his beating heart, which felt so raw and exposed in the harsh light of that unprotected moment that it might burst into flames and burn its own way out of him. The room was still dark, but John's eyes shone, flashing with artless gratitude to be understood, to have been granted this chance. Emotion washed over his face, and Sherlock watched as John's walls begin to tremble. His shoulders crumpled and his eyes closed tightly, and Sherlock felt a sudden need to act, to stop all this.  
His hands, before he could think, flew on their own and he felt them grasping at John's arms, squeezing as they slid up to his shoulders and back down again. Sherlock could not account for his own movements as his hands traveled the length of John's body, aching to make this right, for his touch to show John what Sherlock should have been showing him all along, proof that he was alive and corporeal and real, never leaving him a reason for doubt. John's hand fisted in his shirt, and it was soon crushed between their chests as Sherlock wrapped his arms around John, drawing him close to acquaint the palms of his hands with the ridges of muscle and bone that made up John's back and reassure each one of the truth of his breath and blood and mind.

Sherlock could feel his body quaking in rhythm with each breath he drew, and suddenly, John's hands were on his face, wiping away the salty tracks whose taste Sherlock had just now begun to register (and it made no logical sense; he had stopped John from crying and he had not touched his face to John's, so how could his cheeks be wet with John's tears?) with his fingers. And then John's hands were in his hair, pulling Sherlock down to kiss the wet patches on his face, the good doctor forgetting his own suffering to take responsibility for Sherlock's pain. Sherlock exhaled sharply, roughly, and he felt himself swaying like a drunk – he felt drunk – and he was sure that John's will was the only thing holding either of them up. And then he felt the crush of John's lips against his, John's forehead against his brow, John's breath in his mouth.

Sherlock let out a harsh, stabbing breath (his own lungs were filled with crumbling powder and stale, dead ash but the air that John was circulating through them was springtime and rain and wet grass, and so much life that it made him light-headed), and he could not stop his body from shaking even as he pressed in closer to John, seeking more.

This kiss (or more accurately, John's kiss, in this moment) felt like a baptism and a pardon all at once, and it washed over Sherlock in waves, overwhelming his senses. His eyes remained open but essentially blind, his mind trying to take in all the data possible, but he could do nothing but tread water beneath the surface, keep breathing the air from John's lungs, hands grasping blindly along the contours of John's body, touching him as they should have been from the beginning.

John pulled back suddenly and Sherlock followed in pursuit, almost knocking him flat, but John was solidly grounded and with the strength of a soldier and a former rugby player and a good, kind man, he caught Sherlock and held the both of them upright.

"It's all right, Sherlock," John ran a firm, calming hand up Sherlock's back and across the width of his shoulders. John's touch was soothing but Sherlock could still hear the rush of his blood in his ears, could almost feel his pupils blown wide. His lips felt bruised and swollen, in a way that almost felt good, but the same sensation reproduced in his chest threatened to cut off his air. He felt John's lips press into his curls: once, twice.

"It's all right," John repeated, resting his forehead against Sherlock's crown, breathing into his hair. He lay back slowly, taking Sherlock with him. Sherlock pressed his face into John's skin, the stubble beneath his chin, and tried to calm his illogical, racing heart.

Gradually, the circles John's fingers were tracing began to grow smaller, slower. The rise and fall of John's chest became deeper and more measured. Sherlock didn't feel any particular need to sleep, and adrenaline was still racing through his veins, and yet part of him felt like there would be nothing better than to close his eyes now and not think again until the sun rose to shine away John's fear and despair and to illuminate the path before Sherlock's feet.

Irrational. While changes in insolation could often have a measurable effect on mood fluctuations, the hurt that lay between Sherlock and John would not melt away like frost in the daylight. Assuming the sunrise would literally dawn them a new day was worthless superstition. Sherlock had to do something.

"John," he whispered, hating to break this silence.

"Mmh?" John responded, fingers that had slowed to a halt jolting across the back of Sherlock's neck.

Sherlock took a careful breath and chose his words with precision. "It is imperative that you forgive me," he said. John was mute, suddenly tense beside him, and Sherlock grabbed his silence and ran, stumbling almost through the chaos and debris of this moment. "I know that it was horrible and that I was wrong, but you have to understand that it was because I didn't see, John, I didn't understand because I have a blind spot when it comes to you and it stops my mind from working right. If I had realized, I would have found a way, I would have done things differently, but I couldn't. You are the conductor which allows me to see the world – you illuminate everything for me – and you are so much a part of my vision that sometimes I can't see you for it. But John, if I had known –"

He drew himself up to rest upon his elbows. He knew that he couldn't be making any sense, but John's eyes were watching him intently. He swallowed and forced himself to continue. "I did not do this to you intentionally. I... I couldn't foresee this because I failed to understand as I should have. And I can't imagine how you must have felt but I need you to forgive me because otherwise this situation would be untenable. I didn't try to understand what was happening to you because I still had you here and I couldn't question why that was because I would be lost without you, John, I truly would, and you must forgive me. I did this to save your life," he finished lamely.

John breathed in and broke his gaze, turning his eyes toward the ceiling. He stared blankly for a moment and Sherlock ran his eyes over the contours of John's face in the stillness, observing. "I knew that bit, actually," he said softly. "Mycroft. He sent someone back with some documents. His note said they were to be sent to me in the event of his death, but he thought I'd better read them now because you'd never manage get that out right."

Sherlock wanted to push Mycroft out of a moving vehicle.

John shifted slightly but his eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. "But you didn't tell me," he whispered. "You didn't tell me a thing."

Shame burned through Sherlock's body. "I thought you knew," he responded, and the words felt thick and blunt and likely to choke him. "That you had figured it out."

"Well, I hadn't, obviously. I'm an idiot; remember?" There was venom in John's voice but Sherlock didn't think it was entirely for him.

Sherlock had to fight to keep his voice under control. "You are," he spoke hoarsely, through gritted teeth, "the only person who matters. The only one ever. I have never asked anyone for something like this before – not because there was no need, but because I didn't care. And I'm never going to again, unless you keep telling me no, and then I'm just going to keep asking until you give in or you really do give up and leave for good." He was aware that he was beginning to bargain, to beg, and he cut himself off, but he couldn't let those be the last words hanging in the air, leaving open the threat... "Please," he whispered.

John lay silent in the darkness, hands folded across his chest, staring up at the ceiling. When he finally spoke, his voice was was soft, and it sounded so light and untethered that Sherlock could almost see it rising up toward the ceiling like smoke or mist, and in the back of his mind he wondered if that was what John had been watching, the airy tendrils of his own voice.

"What makes you think I'm saying no?" John murmured, and Sherlock's heart stopped. He didn't dare to breathe.

John rolled over on his side to face Sherlock, eyes bright in the darkness. "You don't understand a thing, do you?" he whispered. "You honestly think that I can choose to be here – no, of course you do, you've chosen not to, so you think that I can do, too."

"John," Sherlock pleaded, but he didn't know where to go from that. Bile rose in his throat.

John shook his head. "You're being daft. You can't have missed this unless you tried – oh my God, is this what you feel like all the time? As if people are being purposely obtuse?"

Sherlock thought that this was one of those questions that he wasn't supposed to answer, but he'd also been told that his unwavering stare from this short a distance was unsettling and not socially acceptable. At a loss for what to do, he sat silent, and blinked at John across the darkness, heart in his throat.

John sighed and started again. "I **am** angry with you," he said, and his voice rose to an almost normal volume. "Incredibly angry. You're right about that. You might have thought you were doing it for the right reasons, but you were unbelievably selfish and callous, even for you, Sherlock. You can't have thought that I could watch you..." (John screwed up his eyes and drew a deep breath) "do that and walk away all right. There is no one in the world who could misunderstand the situation that badly."

"I was trying to protect you," Sherlock protested, loathing the clumsy thickness of his voice.

"I know that," replied John, and his voice went quiet again, suddenly bitter. "You figured it all out, you had a terribly clever plan, and you got to play the big, tragic hero. But you can't possibly have thought..." he swallowed. "Sherlock, you had to have known that without you, my life was not worth saving."

That statement stretched out between them in air that vibrated like a tuning fork. Sherlock felt his guts turn to cold knots.

"What did you think I was going to do? What did you think I had in my life? Sherlock, while you were _gone_," John breathed out through his nose (the more accurate term rose up in Sherlock's mind but he tamped it down decisively), "you can't call what I did then living. Do you know..." Sherlock watched John reconsider making this statement at all and decide to press on, "do you have any idea why I didn't go to anyone? It's not unheard of for people with PTSD to experience hallucinations, Sherlock, you know that. There's the therapist the army found me, there's specialists. I could have done something, I could have gotten medication to make me normal again – Harry was pushing me to do it for depression anyway – but I wouldn't because I** needed** you." He laughed harshly and without mirth. "I was so lost that I was happier thinking that I had lost my mind, because at least you were there, Sherlock. You were with me all the time.

"I started canceling plans with people – real living people – to sit at home and watch crap telly with your goddamned ghost. And I saw myself doing it. I understood everything that I was doing and I was terrified because... because how long can something like that go on? What was going to happen to me? But I kept it up anyway, I chose that path knowing that it could only lead me off a cliff, but that was my only option because you were there."

Sherlock was sick and dizzy. He felt like he was being eviscerated, like Molly Hooper was performing an autopsy on him (a real one this time), removing his organs one by one and stitching him up, carefully scooping out handfuls of his miraculous mind to store in jars of formaldehyde and brine. The world shimmered and blurred before his eyes, and John's hands were on his face again, gentle in their disbelief.

"And you think that I'm going to disappear now that you're alive." His voice was soft, almost chiding. "Of course, I'm angry with you, Sherlock, furious, and that's not going to go away overnight. It's going to take some time and I'm going to get angry and scream at you and probably walk out, but I'm always going to come back. I know that having you here again is..." John's eyes were scanning the pages of his memory for another, better word but he couldn't find anything more fitting than this one, "It's a miracle. I know it's ridiculous, but to me, that's what it is. For you to be alive?" He swallowed. "Nothing in my life is going to matter more than that. Ever."

Sherlock's hands rose to his face. He could feel their traitorous shaking and the welling of his eyes as he attempted to peel John's fingers forcibly from his cheeks, ready to fight his way out if he had to.

But there was no need to struggle. John simply released him. John didn't try to hold him or kiss him or force him to listen to any more sentiments that made it difficult for him to breathe; he just lay there, looking at Sherlock with soft eyes. With permission to go, Sherlock found that the instinct to flee wasn't quite so strong. He lay still and waited for his fear to return, for the obvious course of action to make itself clear to him.

"I'm going to go back to sleep." John's voice was low and soothing. "I'll be right here. You can wake me up if you need me."

Part of Sherlock wanted to make some acerbic comment, ask John again why he would possibly need him, but his throat knew it was a lie, a Pyrrhic defense, and his lips refused to move. Instead, he just nodded.

"It's fine if you need to go somewhere and think," John continued, graciously playing oblivious, acting as if Sherlock were a human adult participating in the conversation and not a cornered, frightened animal. "Although... it would make me happy if you stayed here."  
Sherlock tried not to stare at him blankly. John smiled back. "Goodnight," he whispered, and closed his eyes.

Sherlock lay awake in the dark, alone but not alone, simultaneously soothed and made claustrophobic by the sound of John's breathing beside him. He wanted to go to his Mind Palace, but couldn't bear the thought of inviting the tornado that ravaged his brain into its neatly indexed halls, allowing it to upset their contents and leave it in chaos. So he lay paralyzed in his ridiculous body, watching the data spin and dance in front of his eyes, restless and unable to make any sense of the storm. His chest ached. He stared accusingly at the ceiling until his eyes closed on their own and he slept.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––

When Sherlock awoke the next morning, John had already left for the clinic. Oddly, finding himself in the wrong bed did not leave him disoriented or confused. The unease that had kept him awake for so long seemed to have melted away during the night as well, and he rose feeling surprisingly light.

The kitchen told him that John had made himself tea and a small breakfast and then washed the dishes before restoring Sherlock's microscope to its place on the table. It was a sturdy old thing that had proved strong enough to stand up to a fair bit of abuse in the past, but Sherlock didn't feel quite ready to check its inner workings for damages yet.

John had left his scarf on the coat rack so either the day was not likely to be windy (he was long accustomed to using John as a secondhand weather report to verify his own predictions) or he planned to take a cab, but in that case, Sherlock realized with a sinking feeling, John often chose to leave his cane at home. His job didn't require a lot of standing or walking these days, and working at a clinic, it would have been easy enough to borrow one if the pain became too much. (Of course, John never would but he knew that he could and that sometimes provided enough security for him to test his leg.) It would have been foolish to expect anything else and yet Sherlock was disappointed to see that when John had left the flat at 8:12 that morning, the cane had gone with him.

Sherlock tried composing for a while but without a vexing problem for him to think over, to spur him into creativity, he soon grew bored and set his violin aside. He solved a few small cases via e-mail (a shellfish allergy, fire insurance fraud, and (he felt a twinge of pleasure writing this) the butler did it) and stopped himself from checking John's blog, which he knew he would again find cut off far too soon, leaving him with a lump of guilt in his throat.

He considered beginning an experiment he had long been putting off (how well different runny cheeses could mask the smell of sodium hydroxide), but preliminary examination found supplies to be woefully lacking, and to be honest, he wasn't entirely sure if today was the right day to begin after all. Even if the experiment should be safe under his careful parameters, he didn't seem to have enough vitriol to get through the _discussion_ that would ensue if John came home to find him ingesting poison once again (in perfectly reasonable amounts!), and so he left it for another day, perhaps a time when there was a doctor on hand to compensate for any factors he might have overlooked.

For lack of anything else to do, Sherlock decided to spend some time walking around the flat, going about his day as John must have been doing the past few weeks. It seemed like an interesting exercise and could have proved useful – after all, if a suspect were to plead insanity, it could be invaluable to have knowledge of how people felt or acted when they feared they were losing their minds or seeing ghosts. Though Sherlock tried this several times, he couldn't seem to keep up the energy necessary to carry on very long. After a few short moments, he would become light-headed and have to have a lie down on the couch. He tried to remember the last time he had eaten and decided to have a glass of milk.

He finished the milk and binned the carton, texting John to pick up more (though John surely knew they were almost out). John replied to say sure – and would Sherlock like him to bring home a Chinese? He responded "_Don't forget the egg flower soup. SH_." It was at that point that he realized the milk must be making a difference – he had begun to feel less shaky, more himself, but this was not accompanied by any of the slowness or heaviness that kept him from eating on a case. He made a mental note for further experimentation on the effects of dairy on alertness. He texted John again (_Unless it's from the place with the uneven windows. SH_) and their conversation continued sporadically but pleasantly throughout the afternoon, neither of them making any reference the previous night.

It was curious, Sherlock reflected. He knew that kissing on the lips, a strange practice to begin with, was regarded as special and different and was traditionally saved for a single individual (he was also aware that kisses on the face and hair were not normally exchanged by heterosexual male friends, but the telly had shown him that they could sometimes be acceptable in times of grief or great joy), and so it seemed notable that despite the events of the previous night, his feelings toward John didn't seem to have undergone any significant change. John was still Sherlock's truest friend and his partner in all things. John was still the only person to strive to understand him and to always shows him patience. He was still the only person whose opinion mattered, or whose company Sherlock would voluntarily seek out. They might have shared an emotionally charged kiss, but none of those things had changed. How interesting. Obviously being a sociopath must preclude Sherlock from experiencing the distressing issues of romantic attachment that seemed to afflict average people. This knowledge made him feel slightly smug.

He texted John to see when he would be home (regardless of the fact that he could pinpoint it to the minute, factoring in whether or not John decided to get the dumplings) and sat idly for a few moments, weighing his options on how to occupy himself for the next half hour.

He ultimately decided to borrow John's laptop, and he pulled up the file with the email addresses Mycroft didn't think he knew about, hoping to exact a bit of revenge. He set about composing an inscrutable but threatening email in French (no, German; Mycroft always seemed to know his French), stopping only to send John a text asking him to get the dumplings too. Sherlock's brain always seemed to function a bit differently in German, the rigorous grammar organizing his thoughts with delightful clarity and precision, but in this particular exercise, it was actually something of a disadvantage. He struggled against its orderliness to build phrases that were meaningless but not obviously so and still vague enough to be disquieting. Finally, he settled upon composing the message in French and translating it into muddled Freutsch. That should throw Mycroft for a loop.

He was still at it when he began to hear John's familiar tread up the stairs. He fell suddenly silent. From the sound of the first step, he knew it, but still didn't quite dare to believe it. He could practically feel his ears twitching, and as the echo of each subsequent footstep in his aural canal confirmed his suspicions, Sherlock had to fight not to react, to keep his expression blank. But unable to wait any longer, he met John at the door and his face broke into a grin.

John looked a bit puzzled as he smiled back, shoes and coat slightly damp from the rain that had just started to fall. His left hand held a bag with the pork, rice and soup, and his right hand the dumplings, tofu and noodles... his cane hung, most likely, forgotten on the back of his chair at the clinic. Sherlock knew that a chronic injury, psychosomatic or no, could hardly disappear overnight, but whatever had crossed John's mind when he thought of 221B had been enough to bring him all the way home on two healthy legs.

Sherlock could feel that he was still beaming as he took the bags from John and brought them over to the table. John flicked on the kitchen lights, asking with teasing disbelief, "Have you really been sitting in the dark all day?" And when Sherlock turned to respond, John was still smiling back at him and the feeling that swelled in his chest could have lit up the whole room.


End file.
